President Donald Trump expressed fresh frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin, bristling at the Kremlin’s ongoing military operations even as the US leader seeks to bring an end to the war in Ukraine.
“I’m not thrilled with Putin, he’s killing too many people,” Trump said Saturday during a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Trump spoke hours after a brazen US strike that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, who is now en route to the US to face federal drug trafficking, conspiracy and weapons charges.
“I thought the easiest one would be, one of the easier ones would be, Russia, Ukraine. It’s not,” Trump said, referring to his promise to end the conflict on his first day back in office.
The remarks were the latest showing by Trump of growing exasperation with Moscow following a renewed diplomatic push in recent weeks that saw Trump recently meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and the two express optimism they were moving toward a peace deal.
Putin dampened those hopes Monday, telling the US president that he would reevaluate Moscow’s negotiating stance and claiming Ukraine had targeted one of his residences in a drone strike.
Trump initially told reporters he was “very angry” about the purported attack on Putin’s residence, even as Ukrainian officials denied Moscow’s account and cast the allegations as an attempt to derail the peace talks.
Trump later signal his skepticism over the Russian claims and his disappointment with the Russian leader with a social media post that shared a New York Post editorial. That op-ed sharply criticized the Kremlin and appealed to the US president to escalate penalties on Moscow.
The US president on Saturday said he wants the killing on both sides to stop, including strikes on Kyiv. Russia has ramped up its assault on Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure.
“I’m not happy about it. I thought that would be something that would get solved,” he said of the war. “I think that we’re making progress, but that’s a war that should have never happened.”
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